As the health care reform debate heats up in the country, we keep hearing the same mantra from so-called conservatives and industry leaders alike: "Government-run" health care would lead us to long waits, little choice of physician, and little incentive to improve care.
I spent all of yesterday in a for profit hospital in central Washington State, as my Father-in-law underwent surgery to remove a mass from his thyroid.
What we experienced is, I believe, indicative of both the best and worst privatized health care has to offer, the worst being a frightening glimpse into what kind of "care" awaits us if serious health care reform efforts fail; The worst being, in the end, an endorsement of taxpayer-subsidized public health care.
My father-in-law is 76 years old. He is a case study in the Will to Survive. He survived the Korean War. His face has been wired together, his nose reconstructed since a drunk driver hit his car in 1964. He has tunnel vision in one eye, and macular degeneration in both. He has a heart murmur, a pacemaker, is on a slew of prescriptions and has survived cancer.
He is both a character and a curmudgeon who simply refuses to die.
So when they wheeled him into surgery yesterday morning to remove a suspicious and growing mass from his thyroid down to the top of his lung, we were concerned, sure, but he had survived much, much worse, and this gave us confidence.
Little did we know what a nightmare the day would be.
There are two hospitals in our city. One is for-profit, handling mainly cardiac, trauma and oncology care. The other is a public hospital, much larger, and handles everything else, along with trauma and oncology as well. Because of his heart issues, my father-in-law has spent most of his hospital time at the for-profit one that offers cardiac care.
First, the best of this institution: the surgeons. When he had his pacemaker and stint put in last year, as well as yesterday for the thyroid surgery, my father-in-law had superb surgeons. Yesterday's surgery went very well, the doctor was right out afterward to tell us all that had gone right, and what the remaining risks were. He was clearly very competent and caring. My father-in-law was wheeled onto the recovery floor, and was soon conscious and increasingly alert. The surgeon had said he would take chest x-rays to check for a collapsing lung (because of how far the mass extended into his chest) about three hours after surgery.
And that's where the privatized, for-profit health care so championed by the right completely fell apart.
The nurse, a very nice, seemingly competent individual, came in to check his vitals twice, and to hook up a saline IV. My father-in-law is on a bunch of meds. He takes heart pills, blood pressure and cholesterol medicine, thyroid medicine, and blood thinners. He has to take them on a specific regimen. We gave the nurse a list of all that he was to take in the AM, noon and night. They took him off the thyroid because of the surgery, and the nurse ordered the rest of the meds from the pharmacy..... and disappeared. This was at noon. We didn't see her until 10 minutes to 7 PM, when her shift was ending.
The X-rays? No one showed up to take them. Four hours after surgery we signaled for a nurse. No one came. We went out and flagged one down after fifteen minutes and asked her about the x-rays and the meds. She said she would check. Thirty minutes went by. In the meantime, my 76 year old father-in-law had not been hooked up to monitors of any kind save the brief checks of his vital signs. The patient with a heart murmur who had just had surgery could have coded and no one would know it unless we were there to scream it out.
We flagged a nurse down to get him some ice chips, and to empty the drain canister attached to his throat. She looked annoyed. Still no x-rays, still no meds. A nurse's assistant stopped by five hours after surgery with a urination canister and set it on the table by his bed - an hour after we had had to help him to the bathroom to go on his own.
There's more. A CNA came in to change his bandage - probably above her pay grade. She took off the old bandage indelicately, opened a new bandage pack and promptly dropped it on the floor. She picked it up, turned it over, and then tried to put it on my father-in-law's fresh sutures. We stopped her, needless to say. We sent her away and paged a nurse. 30 minutes went by. A different nurse came in and put the bandage on.
We asked about some food for him - he hadn't eaten since the night before, and this was at 4:30 PM. Thirty minutes later they brought him some broth. Still no x-rays, still no meds.
At 6PM, he started complaining of some chest pain - this from a guy who doesn't feel pain, and if he does, doesn't tell you about it. We went to the nurses' station and almost dragged someone back to our room. They were talking about - I shit you not - Grey's Anatomy. The nurse protested they wanted to find the assigned nurse - I said we hadn't seen her all day and my father-in-law needed attention NOW.
At 6:30, he was wheeled back into surgery to re-inflate his right lung. We waited in his hospital room. The original nurse then reappeared and said she would be going home for the evening, and was there anything she could get him. We motioned to the empty bed and said he was in surgery. She looked confused. We asked her about the meds and she said "They didn't bring them up to him?" She then went home.
The original surgeon saw him this morning - and he was livid. His near perfect operation was bungled after the fact by a chain of incompetence that started as soon as the patient left his sight. His sympathy and anger, needless to say, did little to assuage us.
As the icing on the cake - they lost my father-in-law's glasses. Still looking for them as we speak.
He's scheduled to be discharged tomorrow if all goes "well", whatever that means in this hospital, I'm not sure. It goes without saying that we can't get him out of here fast enough.
This hospital operates on the bottom line. On incentive. They are understaffed, underqualified, unsupervised, and in the end, uncaring. Maybe my mother-in-law and wife will consider legal action, I don't know.
As for me, as I type this diary five feet from his hospital bed, it has made me into a now passionate advocate for socialized medicine, for a public health care option, for the kind of care we would have gotten just across town, at the PUBLIC hospital.
Feel free to share your war stories below. I'm convinced my experience is not merely anecdotal. And thanks for listening to my rant.